{"id":3947,"date":"2024-06-19T12:11:31","date_gmt":"2024-06-19T12:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/?p=3947"},"modified":"2024-06-28T12:18:46","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T12:18:46","slug":"the-most-indirect-critique-of-technology-ever-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/?p=3947","title":{"rendered":"The most indirect critique of technology ever made?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Watching Bertrand Bonello\u2019s The Beast for New Scientist<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSomething or other lay in wait for him,\u201d wrote Henry James in a story from 1903, \u201damid the twists and turns of the months and the years, like a crouching beast in the jungle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The beast in this tale was (just to spoil it for you) fear itself, for it was fear that stopped our hero from living any kind of worthwhile life.<\/p>\n

Swap around the genders of the couple at the heart of James\u2019s bitter tale, allow them to reincarnate and meet as if for the first time on three separate occasions — in Paris in 1910, in LA in 2014 and in Chengdu in 2044 — and you\u2019ve got a rough idea of the mechanics of Bertrand Bonello\u2019s magnificent and maddening new science fiction film. Through a series of close-ups, longueurs and red-herrings, The Beast, while getting nowhere very fast, manages to be an utterly riveting, often terrifying film about love, the obstacles to love, and our deep-seated fear of love even when it\u2019s there for the taking. It\u2019s also (did I mention this?) an epic account of how everyone\u2019s ordinary human timidity, once aggregated by technology, destroys the human race.<\/p>\n

L\u00e9a Seydoux and George MacKay play star-crossed lovers Gabrielle Monnier and Louis Lewanski. In 1910 Gabrielle fudges the business of leaving her husband; tragedy strikes soon after. In 2014 an incel version of Louis would sooner stalk Gabrielle with a gun than try and talk to her. The consequences of their non-affair are not pretty. In 2044 Gabrielle and Louis stumble into each other on the way to \u201cpurification\u201d — a psychosurgical procedure that heals past-life trauma and leaves people, if not without emotion, then certainly without the need for grand passion. By now the viewer is seriously beginning to wonder what will ever go right for this pair.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in these twisty threaded timelines are the off-screen \u201cevents\u201d of 2025, that brought matters to a head and convinced people to hand their governance over to machines. Why would humanity betray itself in such a manner? The blunt answer is: because we\u2019re more in love with machines than with each other, and always have been.<\/p>\n

In 1910 Gabrielle\u2019s husband\u2019s fortune is made from the manufacture of celluloid dolls. In 2014 — a point-perfect satire of runaway narcissism that owes much, stylistically, to the films of David Lynch — Gabrielle and Louis collide disastrously with warped images of themselves and each other, in an uncanny valley of cross-purposed conversations, predatory social media and manipulated video. In 2044 mere dolls and puppets have become fully conscious robots. One of these, played by Guslagie Malanda, even begins to fall in love with its \u201cclient\u201d Gabrielle. Meanwhile Gabrielle, Louis and everyone else is undergoing psychosurgery in order to fit in with the AI\u2019s brave new world. (Human unemployment is running at 67 per cent, and without purification\u2019s calming effect it\u2019s virtually impossible to get a worthwhile job.)<\/p>\n

None of the Gabrielles and Louises are comfortable in their own skin. They take it in turns wanting to be something else, even if it means being something less. They see the best that they can be, and it pretty much literally scares the life out of them.<\/p>\n

Given this is the point The Beast wants to put across, you have to admire the physical casting here. Each lead actor exhibits superb, machine-like self-control. Seydoux dies behind her eyes not once but many times in the course of this film; MacKay can go from trembling Adonis to store-front mannekin in about 2.1 seconds. And when full humanity is called for, both actors demonstrate extraordinary sensitivity: handy when you\u2019re trying to distinguish between 1910\u2019s unspoken passion, 2014\u2019s unspeakable passion, and 2044\u2019s passionless speech.<\/p>\n

True, The Beast may be the most indirect critique of technology ever made. Heaven knows how it will fare at the box office. But any fool can make us afraid of robots. This intelligent, shocking and memorable film dares to focus on us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching Bertrand Bonello\u2019s The Beast for New Scientist \u201cSomething or other lay in wait for him,\u201d wrote Henry James in a story from 1903, \u201damid the twists and turns of the months and the years, like a crouching beast in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,620],"tags":[392,1175,318,86],"class_list":["post-3947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews-and-opinion","category-screen","tag-ai","tag-dolls","tag-robots","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3949,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3947\/revisions\/3949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}